"Drawing on recent scholarship, official records, and the memoirs of participants, Spencer Tucker looks at the important roles played by the Union and Confederate navies during the Civil War. Tucker opens with an overview of the U.S. Navy's history to 1861 and then closely examines the two navies at the beginning of the war, including the senior leadership, officers and personnel, organization, recruitment practices, training, facilities, and manufacturing resources. He discusses the acquisition of ships and the design and construction of new types, as well as their armament and the development of naval ordnance, and Northern and Southern naval strategies."--Jacket.

Ch. 1. The union and confederate navies : organization, personnel, and shipboard life -- Ch. 2. Resources, facilities, warships, and naval ordnance -- Ch. 3. Union and confederate naval strategies and the start of the war -- Ch. 4. The blockade and early Atlantic coastal operations -- Ch. 5. Early union riverine warfare in the west -- Ch. 6. The first clash of ironclads -- Ch. 7. Union operations on the lower Mississippi: the capture of New Orleans -- Ch. 8. Union riverine warfare continued: Vicksburg -- Ch. 9. Union operations against Charleston 1863 -- Ch. 10. Unconventional weapons: the torpedo and the submarine -- Ch. 11. The commerce raiders -- Ch. 12. The red river campaign.